Navigating a BRCA diagnosis & double mastectomy was scary, but @The_Breasties helped get me through it by supporting those impacted by breast or gynecological cancers.

They changed my life.

This Giving Tuesday, their goal is to raise $20k today.

thebreasties.org/donate By supporting @The_Breasties, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, you’ll help fund educational resources, programming and events, and Stage 4 breast cancer research.

today marks the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. this is my story.

my goal is to empower and educate, and to share that Knowledge is Power. i’ve always known that cancer ran in my family.

my dad’s mom, my grandmother Grannell, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I was a little girl. she fought over over a decade - and won - before getting diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

i’ve dreamt of going to space since i was little. despite the naysayers & fear of not being good enough, i’m elated to share that today, i’m taking a giant step towards that goal.

i’ve been selected for @NASA’s @HI_SEAS, a Mars Analog Astronaut Simulation on Mauna Loa, Hawai'i. how it started vs how it’s going

let's take a trip through cosmic time.

let's pretend that our own calendar--the one that runs from January through December--is representative of *the Universe*.

imagine that it's midnight on January 1.

all of a sudden, our Universe expands. at the stroke of midnight, 12am, the Universe expands from *extreme* high densities and temperatures. and it expands rapidly - so rapidly that the timescale wouldn't make sense to write.

this is the Big Bang.

lemme tell you about relativistic space fireballs.

yeah, you read that right.

space fireballs, or flashes that release as much energy in SECONDS as the Sun releases in its entire 10 billion yr life.

also known as: GAMMA RAY BURSTS. some bursts are extremely short (less than a couple of seconds) and some are fairly long (several minutes). a few are even as long as a couple of hours.

what could possibly form such an energetic, bright, and powerful fireball careening through space?

y’all I can’t I just can’t he’s already laughing

hi everyone. thanks for bearing with me as I was away for the last week.

last weekend, thousands of MAGA folks harassed and threatened me on socials, specifically Twitter. i was terrified - not just for my emotional state, which was awful, but for my physical safety as well. i do not wish to go into details or relive the trauma, but i will simply say that it was horrible and nobody- NOBODY - should ever have to endure that.

to me, being brave means showing up every day.

today, that means sitting with my fear and anxiety and not shoving it away. the world might be burning, but in this moment i get to hug my dog, and that makes me one of the luckiest people in the world right now. why do i talk about fear and anxiety and the pandemic and fires and cancer on a “science account”? because i am a human, and these are human things, and i cannot divest one from the other.

prison inmates make up fully 1/3 of crews fighting California fires

they are compensated less than $6/day & are often DENIED firefighting jobs upon release

if you are talking about the California fires and not about how we leverage the labor of inmate firefighters, please start in this historic fire season (2 million acres burned so far, and its only September 9), COVID-19 is exacerbating firefighter risk.

fire and smoke are now dual-pronged threats that target and weaken the respiratory system.

mastectomy who? before my first surgery one year ago I was terrified I’d never be able to pick up a racket again. i’ve played tennis since I was 3 years old — played nationals in juniors, played my first year of college. tennis is in my blood.

HELLOOO THE MOST MASSIVE BLACK HOLE MERGER **EVER** WAS JUST DISCOVERED 5 GIGAPARSECS AWAY, when the Universe was about HALF its current age.

physics is SO COOL!!! the black hole merger is the first EVER detection of an intermediate-mass black hole--theoretical classes of black holes that are between 100-1,000x the mass of our SUN

we've predicted this type of black hole but this is the first ever clear detection. wow.

i want to tell you a story about being navigating healthcare and advocating for myself as a young woman in the US. after testing positive for the BRCA2 mutation, which gives me an 87% chance of breast cancer, i decided to get a preventive double mastectomy.

i'd mulled over the decision for years, & after speaking with my oncologist & assessing my risk, i knew it was the right decision for me

some stars explode, their light as bright as entire galaxies, while others collapse in on themselves, stuffing all their mass into a tiny yet supermassive blip in spacetime. there are those zip through the cosmos, exceeding unfathomable velocities of 1,000 miles/hr, exploring pockets of the Universe yet undiscovered.

I made a Guide to Breast Surgery to help those going through breast surgeries! It includes:

• Glossary of Definitions
• Reconstruction Notes
• Breast Surgery Q’s
• Reconstruction Q’s
• Surgery Gear Checklist
• Nutrition for Cancer Prevention

starafina.com The goal of the guide is to condense info from journal papers, various online resources, multiple patient experiences, @UCSF_BRCA nutrition resources, surgeon review (thanks to my hero @annepeledmd) and more.

Comet makes surgery recovery so much more bearable hi sorry I have no science content for y’all right now but if you want to see more photos of Comet head over to my Instagram, posting photos of him is basically all I’m doing while recovering

instagram.com/starstrickenSF

today is August 1, which means it’s Feel It On The First!!!!!! the first of the month I encourage everyone to practice self-checks— get to know your body so you can better monitor for changes, which is SO important in catching things early!

more here: instagram.com/starstrickenSF my grandmother’s favorite flowers were tulips. my mom sent these to me last night. feeling very connected to her and our BRCA2 connection right now. very grateful to have the opportunity to make decisions for my health that she never had the opportunity to make.

I AM ALL DONE.

I SAVED MY OWN LIFE! I DID IT!

NO MORE BREAST SURGERIES FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!

#FuckCancwr omg there is a typo LOL I AM LOOPy

I carry the same genetic mutation that killed my grandmother, and is killing my dad. Left to its own devices, it could kill me too. My grandmother died when I was 8.

She’d been fighting ovarian cancer for 10 years. Due to a sick twist of fate— and poor genetics, though we didn’t know it at the time, her long battle ended after a brief stint with pancreatic cancer.

1 girl, 3 monitors, 4 screens, no problem. let’s go find some supernovae!!!!! i’ll be walking through supernova hunting on my IG, come ask questions and learn about observing the cosmos as astronomer Instagram.com/starstrickenSF

READY TO OBSERVE SOME SUPERNOVAE CURRENTLY OBSERVING A STAR THAT EXPLODED LESS THAN 5 DAYS AGO AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHGG

let’s get this done y’all. we need 200 more signatures!!! takes literally 2 seconds, and can make real material difference. LET’S DO IT

https://twitter.com/itsafronomics/status/1272665701447335936

150 SIGNATURES TO GO LET’S GOOOOOOOOO